Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the national shortfall in medical staff able to provide elective endoscopy services; and what steps he is taking to ensure that all NHS hospitals are urgently able to provide a six-day elective service.

The Cancer Workforce Plan (published by Health Education England in 2017) includes a commitment to invest in 200 clinical endoscopists by 2021 to support an increase in capacity for earlier diagnosis. This is in addition to the commitment to train 200 clinical endoscopists by the end of 2018. As at June 2020, 247 have either been trained or are currently in training.

We have now started to reset NHS services that were rightly suspended whilst we dealt with the initial impact of COVID-19. Some of the most urgent treatments, such as emergency and urgent cancer care, have continued to be delivered throughout the outbreak.

On 29 April, Simon Stevens and Amanda Pritchard wrote to colleagues across the National Health Service to set out the expectation that local systems and Cancer Alliances continue to identify ring-fenced diagnostic capacity for cancer and sought assurance from regional cancer Senior Responsible Officers that appropriate arrangements were in place. On 8 June, further guidance was issued on the second phase of the NHS response to COVID-19 for cancer services.

Furthermore, the NHS England and NHS Improvement national cancer team is supporting planning by providing analytical modelling about the local capacity required to catch up on demand for diagnostics and acting as a central link to the independent sector partnership so that local systems can be supported with additional capacity where required.